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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298351">witching hour</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendiarism/pseuds/syzygies'>syzygies (incendiarism)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stray Kids (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>...slight horror?, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cryptids, Ghosts, Hwang Hyunjin-centric, Introspective Bullshit, Late at Night, M/M, Melancholy, Reunions, nothing too intense don't worry!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:55:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,234</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298351</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendiarism/pseuds/syzygies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s it right there—Hwang Hyunjin: silly and sillier. Dangling feet from atop the kitchen stool, hands tapping on the marble counter. Long, meaningless, and incoherent ramblings at ungodly hours. Sudden realizations—<em>oh, it’s Halloween, isn’t it?</em>—that end up blurring away, irrelevant with the thought that they don’t quite matter, it’s not as if he’s got any real plans anyways.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Han Jisung | Han/Hwang Hyunjin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>violently tender</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>witching hour</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>[slams hands down on table] happy halloween my friends! that's right this is me officially reminding the world that i stan skz. hyunsung &lt;3 anyways this is self-indulgent bullshit with my personal brand of Crisis on the side! please enjoy, thank you for clicking.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It's one of those nights where Hyunjin can't sleep for the life of him. One of those shitty, hazy nights where everything seems to sludge along like tar, sticky and slow, monstrous and dreadful. </p>
<p>There’s an aggravating sliver of moonlight slipping in through the curtains—stuck there from when he hadn’t shut them fully but was too lazy to get back up again, already buried underneath his covers. But the fabric he’s lying under doesn't feel right either, no matter how much he readjusts, too clingy in some places and too loose in others. And whenever he turns around to his left side for what feels like the millionth time, he’s met with the clock sitting on his nightstand that blares the time at him in bright red.</p>
<p>It’s three am. Witching hour.</p>
<p>Yeah.</p>
<p>He kicks around some more, limply flopping back and forth like a gutted fish, before getting up to pour himself a glass of water. A little cliché—but maybe the cold will help, maybe the clinking of glass against teeth is what he needs right now. His bare feet pad down the creaky stairs, avoiding the eyes in the wood as per habit, and land lightly at the bottom of the steps. He jams them into the slippers arranged haphazardly on the tiles. He thinks about aliens, thinks about ghosts.</p>
<p>Maybe that's it.</p>
<p>Maybe it's a ghost keeping him awake.</p>
<p>A ghost would explain a lot, he decides, blearily shoving a glass under the tap and fumbling at the lever. A ghost would explain the weird feeling inside his chest that never seems to settle. The strange static that’s set into his bones. It’s an old house after all—maybe some of that curious off-kilter energy never made it out of here with its previous inhabitants, instead content to curl up in the fireplace and rattle underneath the floorboards and seep into its new occupant’s life.</p>
<p>Or, he chides himself, maybe he’s just silly and stupid and sleep deprived. He drinks the rest of his water in one long gulp and sets the cup back onto the counter with a solid thunk. His gaze drifts across the kitchen to the rest of his house, and he startles a little at the strangeness of the shapes melting together in the darkness.</p>
<p>It’s something that he’d once thought would go away when he got older, this squeamishness around the blobs that form from the inkiness that comes with night. Something he figured he’d outgrow when he stopped being a kid, the same way you outgrow clothes and shoes and parents. Except, here he is years later, holey jeans and worn-out sneakers and missed phone-calls and all, still flinching whenever the lights flicker off. Silly and sillier.</p>
<p>That’s it right there—Hwang Hyunjin: silly and sillier. Dangling feet from atop the kitchen stool, hands tapping on the marble counter. Long, meaningless, and incoherent ramblings at ungodly hours. Sudden realizations—<em>oh, it’s Halloween, isn’t it?</em>—that end up blurring away, irrelevant with the thought that they don’t quite matter, it’s not as if he’s got any real plans anyways. Vacant stares into his living room, wallowing around the lumpy couch and tracing the boxy television and snagging on the two red eyes glaring from the window—</p>
<p>Wait a minute.</p>
<p>Hyunjin sits up a little straighter, blurriness ebbing away into something more alert, hands stilling.</p>
<p>The red dots dart around erratically for a few more seconds before blinking back into nothingness. Hyunjin stares after them—breath held, heart stopped—waiting for them to dart back with no results, before slumping back down in his stool. He’s almost ready to chalk it up to a strange hallucination, some product of chronic late nights and nothing more than that, when a knock sounds at his door, three short raps in quick succession.</p>
<p>Now. Hyunjin’s seen the movies; he’s not dumb. Nothing good ever comes out of answering the door at three am—it’s practically a death-wish. Digging his own grave and jumping in like a lunatic. Might as well slap some fluorescent tape on himself, wave his arms around, yell <em>hey! idiot just asking for awful things to happen to him over here!</em>, squeeze his eyes shut, wait for the worst.</p>
<p>Hyunjin is perfectly aware of all of this. But at the same time—it’s not as if he was in the middle of anything important, right? He certainly wasn’t sleeping. And, maybe, he’s in that weird sort of mood where things he would usually deem reckless and insane are suddenly normal, feasible. As easily accomplished and mundane as making a bowl of cereal or taking a shower.</p>
<p>Silly and sillier.</p>
<p>He twists at the lock and braces himself—for what, he isn’t quite sure, but still—before wrenching open the door.</p>
<p>He’s expecting a lot of different things. He’s expecting, at worst, some sort of monster: limbs stretched to awful proportions, ghastly faces, beady eyes. Or, perhaps, some sort of sick prank if the universe was feeling kind, kids with nothing better to do than terrorize their neighbors.</p>
<p>What he’s met with is Han Jisung: hair a little overgrown and falling into his eyes, clothes a little worse for the wear, but otherwise perfectly fine.</p>
<p>Hyunjin is stunned at the sight of him.</p>
<p>It’s not everyday that your best friend—your best friend who’s been missing for a <em>year</em>—somehow shows up at your door in the dead of the night. Looking weary and scuffed, but still safe. Still here.</p>
<p>Hyunjin’s first reaction is to slam the door shut on him, his second to pull him into a bone-crushing hug, his third to slap him and ask, <em>where the hell did you go, do you know how worried we’ve been? how could you be so dumb, how could you just dissappear on us like that?</em></p>
<p>He doesn’t do any of those things though. His limbs feel like lead, heavy and trapped in place. His tongue is too swollen to speak, sitting uselessly in his mouth, and his eyes can’t do anything except blink over and over again—wondering if Jisung will drop from existence again and ending up shocked every time he doesn’t.</p>
<p>“Oh,” says Jisung, taking the first crack at the blanket of silence that had settled on them. “I—I wasn’t sure if you would actually answer.” He glances down at his feet, shuffling around, before looking back up to give a tentative smile, one that pulls only at the corners of his mouth. Not quite a smile, then, but the hopes of one.</p>
<p>Hyunjin aches at the sight. He clears his throat, willing away the muteness, before replying, “You’re the one that knocked, you know. What else did you expect?”</p>
<p>It’s a slice of their old normal, that easy back and forth banter, lighthearted jabs and joking insults, and Jisung’s smile properly blooms this time. Hyunjin <em>aches</em>. “I… figured that you would probably be asleep, honestly.”</p>
<p>“Well, I’m quite clearly awake. What are you going to do now that you’ve earned my presence?”</p>
<p>At this, Jisung gives a laugh, drier than Hyunjin would’ve expected, before turning serious. His eyes flash red, eerily similar to the pair Hyunjin had spotted earlier, and Hyunjin feels his heart still for a beat before thudding again, only twice as fast as before.</p>
<p>“Can I come inside? I think there are some things that we should talk about.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>YEAH? YEAH. i just think that cryptids are so cool... fun fact it is 2:30 am i wrote almost all of this in one go, so if it is incoherent... i'm sorry. feel free to point out any typos! i am going to fail a few tests now because of the time spent writing this but that's fine. the first paragraph of this was actually sitting in my drafts for ages—long enough to go through several fandoms (mx, nct, golcha, and oneus) before finally ending up here. wild!</p>
<p>happy halloween once more, as always comments are welcome down below, on cc, or on my (admittedly inactive) twitter!</p>
<p>twt: <a href="https://twitter.com/nanodarlings">@nanodarlings</a><br/>cc: <a href="https://curiouscat.me/aphelions">aphelions</a><br/></p>
<p> </p>
<p>potential inspo list coming when it is not this late / when i feel like it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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